The only item to remain intact at the end of the destructive process we witness within Der siebente Kontinent is the family television, which is switched on, although relegated to the background or off-screen space, throughout. At the end of the film, the ‘snow’ that signals the end of the television broadcast is mirrored by the eyes that can no longer see, while the white noise that substitutes for sound falls on death ears: the TV programme and the family of the three have met their end, leaving the spectator of the film to watch the final, empty images that signal the film’s end.

-- Catherine Wheatley, Michael Haneke’s Cinema. The Ethic of the Image (2009)